Tag Archives: sick

Too Much Crap for 140 Characters

I’m a Twitterholic, but I can’t fit all the crap that’s happened in the last 3 days in just 140 characters.

First and foremost, we had the vomiting baby. It actually started Saturday night, after of all things, a meal of baby food peas. The spectacular green vomit landed all over the baby and the living room rug. But otherwise, she looked fine. We just chalked it up to new food and sitting up right after eating and didn’t think much more about it.

Even on Sunday, the baby acted fine. She took a long nap in the morning, but she’s done that at daycare before so I wasn’t particularly surprised. In the afternoon, it was Sammy’s turn for a nap, and as Mark had been sick all weekend, Sasha and I were left to entertain each other. We danced a little bit, we knocked over blocks a little bit, and generally had a good time.

But in the late afternoon, she threw up again. Now we began to get a little more worried. I cleaned her up and tried to put her to bed, giving her some Tylenol for a mild fever, but she threw up yet again. I eventually got her into bed, but obviously she was going to stay home on Monday. It was a bit of a fitful night, with her waking up at 1:00 AM, 4:00 AM, and for good at 6:30 AM.

After dropping Mark and Sammy off at the Metro, I managed to get her to nap for about an hour. I manage to get through my morning phone meetings, but the last one came just as she was waking up, and she cried throughout the meeting, as all my coworkers heard when I took my iPhone off mute.

Right after that last meeting, I noticed that she was quite warm. I took her temperature and it was a whopping 103.2. Time for some more Tylenol and a call to the doctor’s office. Seriously, while I was navigating the doctor’s voice mail, she through up again. By this point, I had learned to recognize the distinctive little coughing sound and look in her eyes that always preceded another attack of vomiting. So I swiftly carried her into the kitchen where she was free to vomit all over the vinyl floor — which she did. Yuck.

Still on the phone with the doctor, I took her in later that afternoon. This was the worst part. While she felt like she was burning up, her temperature only registered around 100. They pricked her finger to take a blood count and discovered her white cell count was very high (24,000, I learned today). So that prompted more tests: a urine sample for which they used a catheter and a more involved blood draw which took two attempts to get. And after all of that, two simultaneous injections of antibiotics in either leg. My poor baby was being treated like a pin cushion!

She managed to keep down the Tylenol she received at the doctor’s office, but an attempt later that night wasn’t as successful — more vomit. We tried to put her down at bed time, but she ended up puking instead, and again later that evening, throwing up not only the medication but also any Pedialyte and nursing that I had managed to get into her.

Since the only thing that seemed to make her happy was Mommy holding her, that’s pretty much what I did for the rest of the night. Whenever I could squeeze a few drops of Pedialyte into her, and I nursed her as little as possible so that she wouldn’t have too much in her stomach.

Not the most comfortable of nights with her sleeping on my lap and me sleeping sitting upright on the couch, my feet propped up on Sammy’s little chair. Again, she woke up every few hours, but nor more vomiting.

Today, she’s been a lot better. No more fever, and (so far) no more vomiting. Again with a nice nap in her crib in the morning, which allowed me to take a little nap in my own bed. But then, there was my iPhone…

You see, my 3 year old son loves to play with Mommy and Daddy’s iPhones. I let him play with mine for a few minutes this morning while we were getting ready to leave and he had already eaten his breakfast. At one point, and I must’ve missed all this, it fell to the ground. Whether he dropped it or whether it fell from wherever he put it, is still a matter of debate. But this appeared to be the straw after my dropping it a couple of times a few weeks ago. Now the power button in the top right corner won’t press down, or more precisely, won’t come up. It’s permanently down. I can’t power it off, and when it goes off on it’s own, it won’t come back. It just does this continuous reset loop and won’t come to the home screen unless you plug it into the computer.

So I made an appointment to go into the Apple store that’s near Sasha’s doctor. I didn’t really want to drag her to the mall, but she had another appointment today anyway and she looked like she was feeling better. Most importantly, she hadn’t thrown up at all today and wasn’t running a fever. So after her morning nap, it was off to Montgomery Mall.

The genius tried resetting it, but that didn’t fix the problem, since it was a hardware problem, not a software one. Alternatives: replace with another Edge phone for $199, or spend that same amount for a new 3G. Well, reluctantly I opt for buying a 3G, except I would’ve opted for the 16 GB model which would’ve run $299. (There was also a now-moot option of working a deal with Best Buy Mobile, but that didn’t pan out so I won’t bore you with those details.) Time was now running short to get to Sasha’s doctor’s appointment, so I start the process online in the Apple store. But instead of $199/$299 for the 3G phone, AT&T wants to charge me the full, unsubsidized price (what is it, $499/$599?)! WTF?!?

The genius suggests I go to the AT&T store and try to work out a deal there. So I go. But no deal. The guy won’t give me the subsidized price (apparently since we used our 1 Edge phone upgrade option when Mark upgraded his phone). He keeps offering alternatives, each one more ludicrous than the last. I finally leave, almost in tears, to wolf down a quick McDonald’s lunch and get Sasha to her appointment.

The appointment goes much better today than yesterday. Only one pin prick to measure a closer-to-normal white blood cell count. The urine culture ruled out a UTI, and the blood work is still pending. Sasha cried nearly the whole time, more from the memory of yesterday, I think, than of discomfort.

After a quick side trip to pick up some prescribed antibiotics (which I think are totally unnecessary, BTW), we’re home, where she’s laughing and rolling, and knocking down more blocks.

But I’m still iPhone-less.

Baby Sasha, feeling better this afternoon.
Baby Sasha, feeling better this afternoon.

Sick Again

On Wednesday night, I woke up from sleeping with a cough, and then I threw up all over my bed. That made me sad. Daddy washed me in the bathtub and Mommy cleaned my bed. I stayed home from school the next day and felt a little better, but then I threw up again after my nap.

Mommy took me to school on Friday, and I felt a little better but not really that great. But then when we got home, Grandmommy was there! It was really great to see her!

On Saturday we didn’t do very much because Mommy and Daddy didn’t feel so good. But Grandmommy stayed with me while Mommy and Daddy went out to celebrate their anniversary.

On Monday, though, everyone got sick tummies. I was okay a lot of the day, but I threw up in the afternoon again. We all stayed home on Monday and all the grown ups slept most of the day.

But we all are starting to feel better now.

Sick Toddler

I just got over being sick. I was sick for a week with a fever and I didn’t want to eat or do very much besides sleep. Mommy said it was something called “roseola,” but I’m all better now.

See, two Saturday’s ago, my friend Ben’s mommy called my mommy and said we should all go out to dinner. While we were there, I started to not feel very good. I didn’t eat or fuss, but just put my head down on Daddy’s arm. When we got home that night, I was running a fever.

All day Sunday I just lied around being sick. After my nap, I started coughing and spitting up the orange juice I had been drinking. Mommy took my temperature again and it was 105.5°! That’s very high. So Mommy and Daddy took me to the emergency room. There they took some blood to run tests (I didn’t like that very much) and gave me some medicine to feel better. When we came home, I felt a little better and ate some food. Then it was late and I went to bed.

The next morning, Mommy and Daddy took me to the doctor. There, they took more blood (that was starting to get old) and ran some other tests, but they didn’t know what was making me sick. So Mommy and Daddy had to take me to another doctor where they used a special camera to look inside my chest, just to make sure that I didn’t have pneumonia or something. Also, Daddy had to go get some medicine for me, but that tasted really yucky and I didn’t like to eat it.

Later on Monday, Grandmommy came down from New Jersey to help Mommy and Daddy. On Tuesday, she took me to the doctor again with Daddy. Then they brought me home and I spent the rest of the day sleeping and watching Thomas on TV. Wednesday, I was still feeling sick. This time, Mommy stayed home with me and Grandmommy. I still didn’t want to do too much except sleep. Sometimes I would feel a little better and play a little.

By Thursday, I was really starting to feel better. I wasn’t running a fever anymore and I was starting to eat more. Grandmommy went back to New Jersey. On Friday, Mommy took me back to the doctor. I had a little rash, but it didn’t bother me. That’s when the doctor said I probably had roseola. That meant I could stop taking the yucky medicine. I wasn’t very good when the doctor tried to examine me; I cried and fussed a lot.

So now I’m all better, and fussing and throwing tantrums and playing and eating graham crackers like a toddler should. I didn’t like being sick very much, but I got a couple of new Thomas toys (Gordon and Percy, to be exact) and Thomas books out of it. I guess that’s something.

Tracy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

At least my day wasn’t as bad as Mark, who has been sick as a dog in bed since noon.

The day started out great. We zipped down to Sammy’s daycare in no time flat. After that, I dropped Mark off, and I was at work less than an hour after we started.

Then things went downhill.

At first, I kept getting interrupted by a guy who wanted to talk to my boss, but since he wasn’t there, kept pestering me about what he wanted with his website. After awhile, he finally left me alone and I got to work on my new project. Then Mark started IM’ing me that he wasn’t feeling well and by 11, he wanted to go home.

This is where the fun begins. See, Thursday is one of my two work days per week. I just started this new project that’s pretty big and pretty involved, and it doesn’t help matters that we don’t have any access to the client’s database. So, just as I’m starting to figure out a way around this problem (in ASP, no less), is when Mark wants to go home. Now I’m having nightmare visions of Sammy not napping and me having to entertain him when I really needed to get work done.

It’s late, so let me cut to the chase. Instead of working through lunch, I end up chauffeuring Mark home, stopping to pick up Sammy along the way. Then I have to feed Sammy lunch. Then I tried to put Sammy down for a nap, and surprise surprise, he didn’t. So I work for a little while in his room while he’s bouncing around his crib like crazy baby. At three, I bring him downstairs and let him watch Thomas (a.k.a. toddler crack) while I get a little more work done.

When I try to feed him a snack, he makes a royal mess of himself, not to mention knocking the cats’ water dish all over the floor with his Thomas toy. After his snack (and a quick clothes change), it’s back into the living room for more playtime and some story reading.

Then I had to field said toddler while I made dinner. Not fun. He started pushing his new table and chair set around the kitchen while I was trying to cook. Since he’s now overtired, he’s a brat at dinner, trying to wiggle out of his chair and throwing his fork to the floor. At least he eats his green beans, and is happy to take a bath. After a few books, he goes in his crib, but cries when I leave the room.

No time to worry about him, I’m off to the grocery store to get ginger ale and saltines for Mark. (Mark later reported that Sammy fell asleep 10 minutes after I left.) I get myself to the store and realize that (again!) I left my wallet at home. Come home, grab wallet, go back to store, get soda and saltines, come home again.

Whew. Oh yeah, did I mention we were suppose to go up to New Jersey tonight? Guess that didn’t happen.

At least I’m not sick (yet!). And heaven help us all if Sammy gets whatever Mark has!